Ted Grant

East-West trade—profits cut “iron curtain”

A new round of
smooth talking “pacifist” utterances between the Western powers,
including Japan and America, and the Soviet Union and her Eastern
allies has taken place in recent months. This in between bellicose
utterances on the Vietnam War and the bloodthirsty attempts of
American imperialism to force a “peace” agreement in South-East
Asia.

Nevertheless
a definite “detente” between the Western and the Eastern powers
is being attempted at the present time. The capitalist powers of the
West are beginning to feel the pinch of the end of the post war
economic upswing. The slowing down of the growth of the economies in
most of the major capitalist countries of the world, leads them
uneasily to look for new markets as the old ones are becoming
saturated and economic capacity still continues to increase. This is
reflected in nearly all the capitalist countries by the attempt to
impose a fixed barrier against increases in wages, while prices,
despite lip-service to the contrary, continue to rise. This is due to
the increasing amount invested in machinery and buildings, in
comparison with that invested in wages, which means a tendency in the
rate of profit to fall. Hence the practically universal adoption of
the prices and incomes policy by the capitalist powers.

For
years the great powers have been engaged through the so-called
“Kennedy round” of talks, in trying to reach agreements in tariff
reductions in order to increase trade, which in turn would give a
fillip to the economy; but still, after years of negotiations under
prosperous conditions, they have failed to bring these negotiations
to a successful conclusion.

Now
with the falling away and break-up of the alliances of both the
Warsaw Pact and the NATO alliances, or at least their loosening, as
the immediate prospect of world war recedes, the capitalist powers
have begun a scramble for the wide-open markets which exist in the
East.

Mutual bond
of fear

The
western capitalists and the bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and her
satellites or ex- or semi-satellites share a mutual bond: fear of
socialist revolution in the West, with the consequences which a free,
democratic and egalitarian movement of the masses would have on the
totalitarian political systems of the Eastern countries too.
Consequently, deals have now been concluded between giant monopolies
in Italy, France and now Britain, after the £100 million agreement
just signed by Plesseys with their Soviet counterparts.

The
idea is to buoy up the capitalist economies of these countries by
increasing the markets in the East (and it may be added China, which
also has practical possibilities for the future. The so-called
“cultural” revolution is correctly seen as an attempt to prepare
the way to squeeze more out of the workers and peasants, as Stalin
succeeded in doing in 1931, and thus create a bigger surplus for
building up the heavy industry of the country thus creating the
possibility of a much increased trade with the West).

No
revolutionary threat

No
longer are the countries of the so called “socialist” bloc
regarded as a revolutionary threat, except in so-far as capitalism
and landlordism have been destroyed there, and they loom as rivals
for the long-term future. In the meantime the capitalists see no
alternative but to make the best of a bad job and accept the status
quo.

In
his time, in rejecting the reactionary utopia of “socialism in a
single country”, Trotsky advocated a vast increase of trade between
the capitalist powers, crippled by the economic slump, and the Soviet
Union. But he did so with revolutionary perspectives in mind,
advocating the planned
integration of the economies of Germany and Britain with that of the
Soviet Union, involving the working classes, the trade unions and the
technicians, thus demonstrating democratically the superiority of
socialist planning over the capitalist anarchy of the market.

Such
a plan would involve immense benefits in the division of labour
between the different countries, and an immense leap forward in
standards of living for the peoples, but it
would be impossible under capitalism.

No socialism
in one country

Meanwhile the
utopia of socialism in one country, on the basis of a
self-sufficient—“autarchic”—economy has had to be abandoned
by the Soviet Union and the other countries of the East… As the
economies have become more industrialised so their trade with the
rest of the world has increased. But the “Balkanization” of
Eastern Europe has not been abolished: it has actually been
increased. Each of the bureaucratic Stalinist states, has
endeavoured, for the benefit of the power, prestige, privileges and
income of the ruling upper layers of the population, to render itself
independent of even its “socialist” neighbours. Hence the
quarrels between Russia and China, and Albania and her neighbours,
the “independent” policy of Yugoslavia, and now the economic,
diplomatic and other initiatives of the Romanian bureaucracy, re the
establishing of economic and diplomatic relations with West Germany.

The
reasons for this policy on the part of the ruling bureaucracies of
the countries of the Warsaw bloc, lie in the impasse which
bureaucratic control has driven the economies of these countries.
They face a social and economic blind alley. At the cost of
tremendous waste and needless sacrifices on the part of the people,
by means of brute coercion but without the trammels of the vested
interests of private ownership, they have industrialised the
economies of these countries: not for the benefit of the people but
for a small clique in control. They have been unable to transcend the
narrow horizon of the national state. They have been incapable of
even working out a joint economic plan for the countries of Eastern
Europe, let alone that of China and the Soviet Union.

Internationalism

Like
the capitalist powers they find themselves in a blind alley. They
hope to escape the worst effects of the social crisis by increasing
trade with the West. In an attempt to allay the rising tide of
protest at overcrowding, food shortages, and other deprivations, the
new Soviet leaders proclaimed ambitious targets of consumer
production. They have promised a “Western standard of living” by
1970, producing 4 times as many cars as now, 3 times as many
televisions and fridges. This will still only serve the millions of
petty officials and managers, and not the mass of the workers, but
even this target cannot be realised on a bureaucratic basis, the
introduction of “incentives” to managers notwithstanding. Hence
the need to jump a few squares by buying whole Western car factories,
from Renault, Fiat, and now Leylands.
Thus the dread of political revolution in the East, with the
restoration of workers’ democracy, as in the Hungarian revolution
of 1956, and the dread of social revolution in the West, as the world
economic upswing draws to a close, brings the capitalist powers of
the West and the Bonapartist states of the East closer together.

This
will not save them, either East or West. The working class of the
West is beginning to realise the immense power it has accumulated in
the last two decades. The working class of the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe is more and more understanding the incubus of the
parasitic monster bureaucracy which has outlived its function and
instead of acting to increase production, acts as an enormous brake
upon it. This is preparing the way for an upsurge of the working
class East and West which will put an end to capitalism and
Stalinism. It will then proceed to organise production upon an
intercontinental basis, pouring out a flood of goods for the benefit
of the peoples and making the maximum use of the computerised economy
made possible by the “scientific revolution” and the labour of
the working class over the past generations.